Daily Yellowstone journal., 1887-03-05
HARD WORKED NoveLlSTs.
A Bookseller Thinks lie W"uld Bathc
be u IaboIer Than IA story Writer.

he u Laborer Thaa story Writer.
II hliryr would rather worl, ol the
aqucluct tlun write books for living.
looking at It merely aS matter Of
manual labor" said Broadway book
seller. whu>c experience runs Lack a
quarter ut century, "Dil YOU ever
think of what lhc lIOors uf writing
merely moving the pen over the paper,
to sly nothing Of the mental strain
musl be in writing an ordinary book!
Take a novel like one of Mr.. llowell's,
for instance. II contains say $50 pages
with an average of 400 words 10 the
pl.r. ~ 10000 words. How many
hour Of composition do you suppose that
means: Well. l.i00 words an hour is
considered 4 pretty good gait even il you
know cAaClly what YOU want to say and
can clip along without stopping TO study
construction. That would mean, at
least, under the most favorable circum-
stance, imI lniblc, 100 hours of writing.
Now few authors can compass steadily
more than two hours day. Supfnslng,
therefore, that the author knows exactly
what I've wants To write every day and
can plow on without interruption, II
would take fifty days to grind out
book like one of Mr.. How'ls. Bat
many authors have assured me that ON
an average they write each book over
three times before they are satisfied to
leave it. When YOU consider, besides
this, that the labor Of writing is, OF
course. the mcreSt trille comparel with
the other labors Of authorship, you can
sec that there is no picnic about it.
"When you think Of all those things,
the amount Of work done by some Of our
leading novcIists seems prodigious. There
is Miss Braddon. for instance. Her tire
les lTn has already rac,I through fifty
complete works of fiction, and there is no
prohalilily-hopc, some people might
say-th,d her supply will run short for
twenty wears 10 come. Probably there
are G.OO0. 100 printcd wmds in these
books. and TO write them her hand must
have Travelled over 30 600 or Go,0O0
sheets Of paper. even ON the suppo~ltIon
that she never tore up or r'wrolc n
sheet. Sixty thousand sheets Of manu-
script paper would make a lhl" rs hugh us
this room, SupposinS that Miss lIralion
lab0rS under the same limitations as other
writers, she has probably written over
three or four such pihS in the past fifteen
or twenty wears. To do that is no iokc,
/ can tell you. Yet there are Others who
have done nearly rs much. The works
OF The mcliu=s are numbered III the
forii,,. IT," autl or or Dora Thornc has
wInlrn thirly-nmr. Mr.. Black has writ
ten Twenty-Five novels: BcSant ,ud liIcc
tunnel oul iwcnty-lhrr. and Mike Col
Inns has published ihiny-lwo. Dickens
works, including his sketches. collected
into volumes and the story that he wrote
with Wilkic Collins. make thirly.iive
hooks. Nol~ly knows how many Miss
Holmes has turned out, Int some persons
think there are 100 of them at least.
| Then look at the way Oliver Optic. Mrs.
Southworth and others have relcd out
story after story, year in and year out.
| The man who makes any money with
his pen Is no slugGarl, you can ln sure.
'lrlrd as thee writers work. how
ever, the serial story writers for weekly
papers do much better (or worse) than
any of them. Tie serials they put forth
average about 10000 words in length.
One writer uf this kind uf trash made
$1,000 from lIs production last YEAR. He
rec"ivcd only $50 for each serial. Con-
sTqucntly he must have written in a
single year twenty serials. or 10000
wnul>-nearly ten times the quantity of
matirr produrel in year by the most
prolific novelist. The late Ned Buntlne
Is said 10 have made 5000, 900 by writing
this class Of literature. To do ~ he must
have ground out during his lifetime moi
less than 10000, 600 words Of copy.
which means an almost incalculable
amount of labor that, devoted 10 almost
any other occupation. would have made
him millionaire. New York Mail
and Express.